Maple Syrup and Birthday Cupcakes

This past weekend a good friend from high school was visiting Boston. K had a conference here last week and stayed to hang out this weekend. On top of hanging out with friends, Butler made it to the Final Four! K went to Butler and is the president of his local alumni club!


On Saturday we decided to partake in some local fun by heading up to New Hampshire to go to a maple house where they boil maple syrup. We had beautiful weather on Saturday. It was a bit chilly but sunny and not a cloud in the sky. After arriving at the Grant Family Maple House, we had some food and got in line to learn all about how maple syrup is made.


What we learned is that the sap from the trees has about 2-3% sugar in it straight from the tree. At that percentage, it would take 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup!! So they first condense the sap until it reaches about 8% sugar. The sap is then boiled to evaporate off the water.


Once the temperature reads 7 degrees above the boiling point of water, you have syrup! The guy in the maple house even explained how they use a baraometer on the wall to get the barometric pressure so they know the exact boiling temperature of water for that given day. It was all very scientific and extremely interesting.


The small bottles of maple syrup were a sample from each batch they had made at the maple house this season. The guy explained that as the season goes on, the syrup tends to get darker due to the change in the amount of sugar in the sap.


Of course, we had to get some maple products while we were there. Obviously, maple syrup. We also got some maple candies, some maple sugar, and some maple pepper. Can’t wait to find creative ways to use the sugar and pepper. If anyone has suggestions, please let me know!


Also, since K’s birthday was last week, I made him some cupcakes to celebrate. I went with my go-to chocolate cupcake recipe. I love that you can whip these up by dirtying only one bowl and using a whisk! I dipped them in some ganache and topped with festive sprinkles. Aren’t they pretty?

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6 Responses to “Caramel Almond Chocolate Cupcakes”

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    fearlesskitchen — August 19, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    This is a really interesting recipe. I haven’t seen dulce de leche combined with chocolate very often. I can see where you wanted to have the color contrast with the ganache, but I personally think it looks great as it is.

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    ~ Kristie — August 19, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    They look amazing! If you don’t want to wait 3 hours for dulce de leche you can use the microwave method found at http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/255/Dulce-de-Leche.

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    Ingrid — August 19, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    I’m not a fan of chocolate but they are a pretty cupcake and I DO like caramel and dulce de leche!
    ~ingrid

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    lifeoftheparty — August 20, 2009 at 7:11 pm

    That looks decadent! Choc-a-holics rejoice =D

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    nutmegnanny — August 21, 2009 at 4:54 am

    Your cupcakes are some of the cutest I have seen!

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    Julie — August 21, 2009 at 2:16 pm

    Those look mouthwatering good!

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